- [on adding his own personality to his music] It's obvious that I love a lot of different kinds of music so what I want to do now is stretch the boundaries of so-called roots music as far as I can while making it singularly stamped with my own personality. I'm not worried about sounding exactly like some old blues or doo-wop record; screw that -- I want to sound exactly like me doin' that stuff.
- I've never understood how someone can obviate their own personality to crawl inside somebody else's skin. If I can't bring something of my own self to it, it just doesn't make any sense to me. And, to me, you should throw your heart and soul into that music. The thing I don't agree with the blues Nazis is, "Oh, you got to play it just like the original Checker 78." If you mummify something and just turn it into a museum piece, it won't live. That music's vibrant and you just got to play that stuff like you're killing rattlesnakes in your backyard -- with a vengeance.
- If it ever got to the point where I thought I had lost the things that drove me when I was 14 years-old -- that gotta-be-somebody instinct that drives every performer -- if I was just up there headed into Hackland, I'd quit.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content